1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of computers and similar technologies, and in particular to software utilized in this field. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to the graphical presentation of system exceptions.
2. Description of the Related Art
The growing demand for information automation continues to drive the development of progressively more sophisticated information processing environments. The management of the hardware systems and software applications that comprise these environments has become increasingly complex due to the quantity and diversity of the resources that offer the capabilities they provide. In response, known system management approaches have been implemented to monitor system availability and performance, track events as they occur, and report exceptions to normal operation. However, these approaches typically produce large amounts of system operating detail, much of which may not be immediately relevant to exception handling, often requiring the use of information filters, graphical views and facilitated navigation to allow system administrators to reduce information overload.
For example, in some known approaches, events can be filtered to display only if a resource's status reaches a predetermined threshold level (e.g., display if operating health is less than 80%). In others, configuration parameters can be set to indicate a resource's operating state within a topology-oriented view if the resource's condition becomes abnormal (e.g., red for critical, amber for marginal, etc.). While these approaches limit the display to only those resources or events that fall within predetermined alert parameters, related resources or events contributing to the alert are often not visible without accessing additional levels of detail. Identifying the location of this additional information can prove challenging, possibly requiring the opening and closing of additional graphical windows, drilling down multiple levels of a hierarchy tree, or other time consuming and tedious efforts.
Even when the relevant information is found, additional delays can be encountered, as it is often difficult to see the contextual relationship between contributing factors and the reported exception. As the number of resources being managed grows in number and heterogeneity, the presentation of these relationships becomes more difficult. Showing too much information can be confusing and mask a problem. Showing too little information can provide insufficient means to resolve a problem. Showing adequate information but not its contextual relationship can delay resolution of a problem. In view of the foregoing, there is a need for an improved method of presenting the contextual relationship between a reported exception and its contributing factors.